David Goldman/AP

Personnel stand aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it arrives into Nuuk, Greenland, after traversing the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Saturday, July 29, 2017. After 24 days at sea and a journey spanning more than 6,000 miles, the MSV Nordica has set a new record for the earliest transit of the fabled Northwest Passage. The once-forbidding route through the Arctic, linking the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, has been opening up sooner and for a longer period each summer due to climate change.

Every four years, the nation’s scientists from myriad federal agencies come together to release a comprehensive report synthesizing the current state of climate science. It’s become a routine affair, with a predictable process involving extensive analysis of studies, numerous drafts, and eventual approval from the White House before the public release of the latest National Climate Assessment. But this year was different.

Rather than follow traditional protocols and await approval from the Trump administration, these scientists urged The New York Times to release the document in draft form out of fear that the White House might suppress the findings. That fear likely stems from a general skepticism of climate science that runs through the Trump administration. The report, these scientists say, is too important to be sidelined by politics.

“It’s the most comprehensive and up to date report on climate science in the world at this point,” says Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University who was one of the authors of the report. “This report covers the entire gamut of the science we need to know to make sound decisions about our future.”

Citing analysis from thousands of studies, the nation’s climate assessment offers not just a dire warning about what climate change may bring in future years, but a detailed account of effects that are already occurring and of human contributions to those changes.

“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” a draft of the report published by The New York Times reads. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are primarily responsible for the observed climate changes in the industrial era, especially over the last six decades.”

That message conflicts with ideas put forth by many members of the Trump administration, which has taken a more skeptical view of climate science. Some of that skepticism can be traced to the evangelical community, which enjoys an unprecedented level of influence in the current White House. Though to many scientists and scholars, the pitting of climate science and religion against each other is a smokescreen, and an oversimplification. 

“Climate science has been very deliberately framed as an alternate religion,” says Dr. Hayhoe, who also directs Texas Tech’s Climate Science Center and is an Evangelical who has engaged deeply with faith communities around the issue of climate science. “Very cleverly, this issue of climate change has been framed as one of false prophets versus true believers.”

Evangelical influence

“It is definitely the case that climate skepticism is most likely among white US Evangelicals,” says Willis Jenkins, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “So there is something going on in that particularly powerful demographic.”

For some scholars, the antipathy many American Evangelicals feel towards science runs deep, going back to the Scopes Trial and the ongoing rejection of the theory of evolution. 

“The dispute over Darwin planted a seed, and the evolution argument set the groundwork for the current climate science argument,” says Michael Altman, professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.  

Evangelicals had been somewhat accepting of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was more a local movement focusing on pollution and litter, notes Lisa Vox, a historian who teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and author of "Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era."

But once it became an issue of global climate change, Ms. Vox notes that evangelists like the bestselling author Hal Lindsey denounced climate science as a scam “being used to to consolidate the governments of the world into a coalition that may someday facilitate the rise of the Antichrist."

Evangelical antipathy toward climate science, however, is far from uniform, and there has been a growing movement of environmental activism among the politically active subgroup. Groups such as the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which include more than 300 senior evangelical leaders in the United States, say they are convinced that “it is time for our country to help solve the problem of global warming.”

Faith ‘hijacked by politics’

But other scholars see a decades-long effort by conservatives to discredit climate science as the primary force behind the current skepticism. “The kind of language we’re hearing now dates back to the early 1990s, and comes from the conservative think tanks who – as the Kyoto Protocols were being put together – began releasing articles and books and reports all emphasizing uncertainty about global warming,” says John Cook, professor at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. 

“Even as the science has gotten stronger and stronger, the language hasn’t changed,” he continues. “They’re still using the same arguments,” noting that now it’s “become the framing” of the issue and one that many people now accept.

There is also Republicans’ growing distrust of science. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago, surveys showed Democrats and Republicans trusting scientists around the same level, in recent decades that gap has widened, notes Professor Cook.

In a recent survey conducted mainly online by the Pew Research Center examining Americans’ feelings about climate scientists, the partisan divide was stark. Some 70 percent of liberal Democrats said they trusted climate scientists to give full and accurate information about the causes of climate change, compared with just 15 percent of conservative Republicans.

Similarly, just two years ago, 54 percent of Republicans said American colleges and universities had a positive impact on the country, with only 37 percent saying higher education had a negative impact, according to Pew Research surveys.

In a dramatic two-year shift, however, today nearly 60 percent of Republicans now see American higher education as having a negative effect on the country, according to Pew’s survey. By contrast, 72 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of the country as a whole see American colleges and universities positively.

For her part, Hayhoe says she sees those religious arguments as a smokescreen for people’s real objections: that they don’t like the perceived solutions.

“The idea that caring about this world that God created for us is somehow contrary to Christian belief is completely unbiblical,” she says. “In the US, our faith has been hijacked by our politics.”

Amid international concerns of post-election violence, Kenyans are casting their ballots on Tuesday in one of most tightly contested presidential elections in the eastern African nation’s history.

“I will cast my ballot first thing in the morning and leave,” Michael Otieno, a carpenter based in Nairobi, said Sunday. “I am not sure about my security in the city.”

Mr. Otieno was one of thousands of Kenyans fleeing major cities for their rural homes to wait out the election, as memories of violence after a contested 2007 presidential election bubble to the surface. The aftermath of that vote saw a two-month wave of attacks that left 1,000 people dead and 600,000 displaced.

Since then, Kenya has upgraded its voting system, incorporating biometric voter identification and electronic transmission to reduce the chance of fraud. For Kenyans, the election is an important milestone to cement their status as a relatively stable, democratic economic powerhouse. Those same attributes have made the campaigns closely watched beyond Kenya’s borders, as well.

But several recent events have undermined faith in a fair election. Now, whether peace will prevail during and after the polls is again a concern for many citizens.

“I want to ask everyone to pray for peace as we go to the general elections,” President Uhuru Kenyatta told an anxious nation at Sunday church service in Nairobi.

Mr. Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga are the front-runners. Kenyatta, a son of Kenya’s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, is seeking re-election under the ruling Jubilee Party (JP), while Mr. Odinga is the National Super Alliance (NASA) opposition coalition candidate.

“Kenya's election is important since this will be the first since the end of the ICC process following the 2007 violence,” says Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, chief frontier markets analyst at DaMina Advisors in New York, referring to International Criminal Court charges of inciting post-election ethnic violence against Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto. Those were dropped in 2014 and 2016, respectively. A peaceful outcome could “signal that Kenya is once again one of Africa’s most stable democracies,” Mr. Spio-Garbrah adds.

Long voting queues formed on Tuesday, with citizens arriving at polling stations as early as 4 a.m. Some voters said they had even left hospitals to cast their ballot, with Kenyan media reporting that one woman gave birth at a polling station and named her daughter “Chepkura” – kura means “ballot” in Swahili.

Memories of past vote

The violence 10 years ago ignited after former President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner, and Odinga rejected the polls as rigged. Between Dec. 27, 2007 and Feb. 28, 2008, when the two sides created a coalition government, communities engaged in deadly ethnic revenge attacks, with opposition-supporting members of the Kalenjin and Luo tribes attacking their Kikuyu neighbors – Mr. Kibaki’s tribe, and the nation’s largest ethnic group.

Observers say that now, the transparent release of results and faith in their accuracy is critical. Recent weeks, however, have shaken confidence that history would not repeat itself, despite improved election technology. Last Monday, a senior election official in charge of the election commission’s information technology was found dead, with signs he had been tortured. Foreign advisers to Odinga’s campaign were deported last weekend, and the opposition claimed that police had raided one of their vote-counting centers. 

“There have been allegations that the ruling coalition plans to steal the election. The opposition has said it will not accept results of rigged election. This has send shock waves, since this is what triggered the 2007-2008 post-election violence," says Benjamin Muema, a political and security analyst based in Nairobi.

A history of inter-ethnic attacks has also deepened the unease.

“Politicians have been stirring ethnic animosity during the campaigns,” says Victor Ndambuki, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi. “Many citizens fear in such a scenario, losers may not accept the results and may turn to their already charged communities for support. This has taken a violent twist in the past.”

But memories of the consequences of the 2007 attacks may also help prevent such an outcome.

“Even though many citizens fear a repeat of the violence, I think the International Criminal Court cases [against Kenyatta and Ruto]...are a deterrent,” says Abdalla Kheir, a lecturer at Kenya’s Umma University.

Regional consequences

For decades, Nairobi has also acted as the base for humanitarian groups providing relief aid to conflict zones like South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia, the homeland of al-Shabab, the Al Qaeda affiliate in eastern Africa. A bungled election would disrupt these activities – particularly crucial now, amid profound drought and food insecurity.

“The world is watching the election because of the country’s strategic position. Many international organizations have offices in Kenya and the vote will determine if they will continue to stay,” says Mr. Ndambuki. “That’s why the election matters.”

Some regional allies are also watching the election for its security implications, such as in ongoing campaigns against extremist groups in Somalia. But interest in countries like Rwanda and Uganda is driven by economic issues, as well as political ones, notes Andrew Franklin, a security analyst in Kenya. They “are more concerned about whether they can use the port of Mombasa,” one of the continent’s largest, he says. “They are concerned about the short-term effects of the elections. It’s about the economy.”

The election also has the potential to deliver a political message. In a region where few incumbents lose elections, a peaceful transfer of power would be “a major political achievement” and “a great boost” to democracy, says Shadrack Nasong’o, an associate professor of international studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.

If Kenyatta wins “fair and square” and the results are not contested, that, too, would be an important milestone, Dr. Nasong’o adds. A manipulated vote to retain the incumbent’s power, however, could strengthen neighboring countries’ leaders’ “resolve to remain in power” themselves.

Watching and waiting

With Kenyans also electing senators, governors, and regional representatives on Tuesday, analysts say this a chance for the people to reaffirm the promise of the 2010 Constitution, which devolved resources and governance to rural areas, diffusing the power of the presidency.

But many voters feel more reforms are needed. Kenyans have been “intent on change," Nasong’o says, and see a fair vote as their only lever. “Many argue that every time they have this opportunity to effect change, it is snatched away from them.”

Over the weekend, long-distance buses struggled to keep up with the number of Kenyans leaving the cities.

“We have seen some violence already. I cannot wait,” said Mutuku Kiema, a laborer in Nairobi, as he boarded a bus for eastern Kenya.

Yet others hoped that people would accept the results and listen to calls for peace.

“Kenyans want to see better economic growth and progress. They also want to feel secure in their own land,” Ndambuki says. “This can be best achieved in a democracy, and that is in the minds of many as they vote.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs the Capitol in June after a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about Russian meddling in the election and possible connection to the Trump campaign. Two bills have been introduced in Congress to protect Mr. Mueller from being fired by the president.

Does Robert Mueller need congressional protection? Some lawmakers think he might. So they’re proposing to provide Mr. Mueller, the special counsel in the Russian election tampering investigation, with legislative armor meant to prevent the White House from firing him unless it has a really good reason.

Senators introduced two bills last week intended to block an unwarranted Mueller dismissal. Both would etch in law the principle that Department of Justice special counsels can’t be ousted just because the president feels like it. Both would establish a panel of federal judges empowered to determine whether a special counsel firing was legal.

These bills may, or may not, be constitutional. After all, they’re an example of the legislative branch poking around in executive branch personnel matters. They may, or may not, pass. Any such legislation would presumably have to attract a large veto-proof majority.

But they’re perhaps an important development in the increasingly tense relationship between President Trump and GOP lawmakers, and Capitol Hill at large. Even many Republican members of Congress are growing restive about Mr. Trump’s impulsive tweets and threats and breaking of political norms. White House leaks indicate Mr. Trump has talked about firing Mueller. The bills are Congress’s way of warning that such a move could have dire consequences.

“The legislation is meant to be a deterrent – if successful, it would not actually have to be used because the special counsel would not be removed,” writes Richard H. Pildes, a professor at the New York University School of Law and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in an email.

A target from the get-go

Special Counsel Mueller has had a target on his back since the early days of his tenure. He was appointed on May 17; on June 12 Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a Trump friend, said publicly that the president was weighing Mueller’s dismissal. A day later, The New York Times reported that Trump did indeed want to fire Mueller, but that his staff had dissuaded him. In response, then-Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that the president had the “right” to get rid of Mueller, but had no intention of doing so at the time.

Since then, Trump surrogates have steadily criticized Mueller, saying his investigation has gone too far afield and that he’s biased due to his friendship with fired FBI Director James Comey, among other things.

Trump himself hasn’t directly addressed the question, though he has repeatedly referred to the investigation Mueller leads as the biggest “witch hunt” in history.

Under existing Department of Justice regulations, Trump does not appear able to fire Mueller directly. The president would have to order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, to do the deed. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from Russia investigation matters.)

If Mr. Rosenstein refused, Trump could fire Rosenstein, then look for a replacement who would agree to dismiss Mueller. That’s how President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox unfolded in October 1973.

The new bills represent a congressional effort to keep things from ever getting that far. Sen. Chris Coons (D) of Delaware and Sen. Thom Tillis (R) of North Carolina introduced one, the Special Counsel Integrity Act. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina and Sen. Cory Booker (D) of New Jersey were among the prime backers of the second, the Special Counsel Independence Protection Act.

Both would codify the existing Justice Department rules about the hiring and firing of special counsels into law, lest the president just sweep them away and do what he wants. Both would establish the principle of judicial review of any special counsel firing, though they differ in when this review would occur in the process.

Backers say it’s possible the two efforts could be combined into one in September. At the least, they’re an example of how Congress is increasingly united in its efforts to push back against Trump excesses, according to their sponsors.

“This modest step ... is one way of our asserting ourselves as the Senate, just as we did with the Russia sanctions bill,” said Senator Coons on CNN earlier this week.

Constitutional challenges?

Are the bills constitutional? The legal consensus at the moment appears to be that they are, or at least would be with some minor tweaks. That’s in part because the now-expired statute which provided for the appointment of past Independent Prosecutors such as Lawrence Walsh in the Reagan years and Ken Starr in the Clinton era was a much more direct intrusion on executive branch prerogatives. It passed high court muster, so the new bills would too, runs this analysis.

But that’s not a sure thing. Both Democrats and Republicans were relieved when the old Independent Counsel law expired. Both parties had felt the sting of an unfettered special prosecutor ranging far and wide in search of perceived corruption. Both had seen how that exacerbated partisan brawling.

Given that experience, it’s possible the Supreme Court would now rule differently on this matter, writes Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel to President Obama, in the legal blog Lawfare.

“A new independent counsel-type law would face, at best, an uncertain fate in the Court,” he explains.

Are the new bills a good idea? That may be an even more difficult, and important, question.

The greatest utility of the new bills is that even without passage they establish a sort of red line. They’re evidence of disquiet on Capitol Hill. Implicitly, some senators are now saying to the president, if you go this far, then your presidency is in deep trouble. Even many Republican lawmakers may not back a Mueller firing.

“The main purpose for the enactment of these bills is for Congress to send a strong, credible signal in advance that it will not tolerate White House interference with the Special Counsel process,” writes NYU Law's Mr. Pildes.

Unintended consequences

But other experts think the legislation could also have some unintended consequences. Its own constitutionality might become a key issue, distracting the public from the actual circumstances of a Mueller dismissal. Thus for Trump, the firing of the special counsel could become a contest of litigation he might win, not the beginnings of a process that could lead to his own impeachment.

In the final analysis, Congress already has great influence over whether Trump fires Mueller or not, writes Bauer. Lawmakers don’t need to pass a new bill that might muddy the waters. Instead, they need to clearly say something they’ve shied from up to this point: firing Mueller without cause would be an impeachable offense.

“Congress’ use of the impeachment power,” explains Bauer, “is far superior to a return to the constitutionally murky, politically disabling conflicts invited by the last Independent Counsel law.”

Doug Struck

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, once a symbol of a horribly fouled river, now is a busy scene of pleasure boaters and tourist boats that compete with big ships still using the river.

Tim Gottshall paused in mid-paddle, his kayak drifting for a moment on the Cuyahoga River, to consider the question: Is the water safe?

“Well,” he replied, “I’m not drinking it.”  But splashing a bit as he paddled: no problem.

Nearby on Wendy Park, where the river meets Lake Erie, Jermaine Eggleton was pulling catfish and bass out of the Cuyahoga. A jet-skier offshore tumbled in the water, laughing. And Tom Rousher and Paul Grande, almost finished a 20-mile Sunday bike ride, said they would have no problem eating fish from the river, “though no more than two a week,” allowed Mr. Rousher. 

The mere fact that there are fish, fishermen, bikers, and boaters in and about the Cuyahoga River is a dramatic example of progress, one that Wayne Bratton welcomes with a mix of emotions as he watches the river’s busy scene from his boat.

Captain Bratton is a self-described “river rat,” hobbled by his fifth hip replacement but still plying the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie. Now in his 80s, he takes groups of kids with disabilities, scuba divers, police honorees, wedding parties – “anyone, anytime, for anything that’s legal, or reasonably close” – aboard his 65-foot cruiser, Holiday. In his career on the water starting as a seaman, he rose to captain huge container ships, moved ashore to manage a shipping fleet, and invested in an oil tanker company.

He sailed on – and profited from – the fouled arteries of grimy, belching, industrial Cleveland. And it was one of those key waterways, the Cuyahoga River, that caught fire nearly five decades ago, making Cleveland and its river the poster-child of the fledgling environmental movement.

The fire June 22, 1969, started from a splash of molten metal from a steel plant conveyor onto oil-soaked debris in the river below. It was doused quickly – before photographers arrived – and was of little concern in Cleveland. “It was just another day on the water” on a river that – like many of the nation’s industrial rivers – had caught fire repeatedly before, Mr. Bratton recalls.  But then Time magazine picked it up, with a slightly misleading “file photo” of a dramatic blaze at the same spot 17 years earlier.

The river was profiled as something that “oozes rather than flows,” was biologically dead, a place that locals joked would dissolve you before you drowned.

That was fair, Bratton concedes. “Seriously, it bubbled like a cauldron from all the chemicals. And it had a unique odor. If you were off watch and woke up below decks, you knew you were in Cleveland from the smell.”

The Time story came just as youthful outrage over the Vietnam War was spilling into the environment, and the public was waking up to the realization that it should be incredulous that rivers could catch fire. Carl Stokes, the country’s first African-American elected mayor, went before Congress to demand help. His brother, Rep. Louis Stokes, helped get passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 – all pillars of the ambitious scrubbing of polluted America that followed.

Bratton applauds the cleanup. Gradually, the tanneries and paint manufacturers and steel plants that lined the last six miles of the Cuyahoga River leading to Lake Erie stopped seeing the waterway “as this lovely sewer where we can just throw everything in the river,” Bratton says.  

But he has caveats. Bratton notes them carefully like the business and law student he eventually became.  He says industry had started reforming itself before the fire.

“We knew we had a problem. We knew it needed to be addressed,” he says. Some of the cleanup techniques that eventually scraped the chemicals from the surface of the river and dragged garbage out of it were being developed by industry before the 1969 fire, he says.

In fact, Bratton notes, industry has long-ago cleaned up its act, while local and regional agencies still have not fully stopped raw sewage flowing into the river after fierce rainstorms, a chief contaminant. And they have done little to address the more general toxic runoff from roads and parking lots and agricultural fields.

Jane Goodman agrees. A former radio producer inspired by the 1990 Earth Day and now head of the Cuyahoga River Restoration, she says the cleanup of the river is not finished. But the fire helped hold a mirror to the city.

“You can’t change your brand unless you change the underlying image,” Ms. Goodman says. “In our case, the burning river moniker, the fires, the Rust Belt, the dying-city image is something we still have to rise from. But the generations now understand that being able to say we did this is almost as important as having done it.”

With winking irony, the city even sports a Burning River Beer.

Forty miles upriver, at the town of Cuyahoga Falls, Elaine Marsh is a watershed specialist for Summit Metro Parks, a regional agency that is slowly accumulating preserved land on the swift whitewater of the Cuyahoga’s upper 94 miles. She stands above a glistening stretch of racing rapids and fast waterfalls, comparing them with 100-year-old photos of the narrow river hemmed in by a jumble of factories.

“The fire is now part of the myth of the river. And by myth, I mean something that inspires,” she says. “We like to think of the Cuyahoga as a phoenix rising out of the ashes of the fire.  Could that have happened without the fire? It’s like asking if slavery would have ended without the Civil War.  Probably, but not for a long time.”

Sitting on the bow of the Holiday at dock in Cleveland, Bratton agrees. The signs of the revival pass by the port side of his boat: colorful sculls with rhythmic rowers, kayakers, and pleasure boaters, some of whom hail him by name.

“That’s what tells me the river is back. Nobody would have come down here before.”

But, like the ship captain he is, he frets that the river’s newfound popularity brings new dangers.  Mixing a merry recreational scene with the heavy hauling that is still the river’s main chore is dangerous. The day before, the 630-foot Robert S. Pierson squeezed up the mouth of the river to take on a load of salt. It turned the corner to the old river arm with barely a dozen yards to spare on either side, a delicate pirouette that was celebrated by jet skiers and kayakers playing under its bow.

Wash from the side thrusters of the ship could easily capsize those pleasure craft, and a broadside wind could pin the ship against the steel-lined shore, squashing an errant kayaker, Bratton worries.

But he concedes that he now gets a lot of customers, overseas groups, who want to go six miles upstream to see where the fire burned the river.  

“They all want to know, ‘How did we clean it up?’ ” Bratton muses.  “I tell them we just did. Everybody felt it was a personal responsibility.”

When parents ask Julie Turchin why she allows her two daughters so much independence – including freedom to roam their California neighborhood and walk home from school – she often cites an experience she had when she was 9.

She and her friend had been dropped off in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., with a plan to take the subway home. When the T broke down, the girls inadvertently got on the wrong bus and ended up at Ruggles station – not a great part of Boston at the time. They got off, consulted a map, and made their way back to the right place – 1-½ hours late, but very proud of themselves.

Six years later, when Ms. Turchin got separated from her high-school classmates in Russia, she didn’t panic, but used her broken Russian to figure out the transit system.

“It wasn’t a big deal, because I’d been figuring out how to get home, lost on the subway, since I was 9,” says Turchin. That experience “gave me pride, independence, and a skill that’s important to have later in life. That’s the kind of stuff I think we don’t give our kids, out of fear they’ll end up [at] Ruggles.”

Days spent playing outside with friends, and without parents, used to be a hallmark of summer vacation – and parents like Turchin are trying bring back elements of those old-fashioned summers for their own kids. It is, however, more complicated than just telling kids to come home when the sun goes down: For one, there are usually no other kids outside to play with.

But more child development experts are warning about the harm that’s caused by overprotective parenting and fear-based decisions, particularly as kids get fewer chances for risk-taking, unsupervised free play, and time away from adults.

“Children throughout history have always played and explored largely with other children away from adults,” says Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College and the author of “Free to Learn.” “That’s how their learning occurs, it’s how they practice skills…. We have more or less done away with the culture of childhood.”

Part of it is the reality of having two working parents with busy schedules, but there’s also the fact that it’s hard to find friends who also are free to roam, homework is more abundant, and activities like soccer ramp up in intensity at a far earlier age.

“It feels like everybody is operating at a faster pace,” Turchin says.

So much scheduling means many kids spend far less unstructured time outside, says Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and author of “Balanced and Barefoot.”

She started to get concerned when she saw so many kids who were having issues with falling, paying attention, and poor balance. She realized they were spending little time outdoors, and, when they were, much of their behavior was restricted: Schools didn’t allow kids to hang upside down on the monkey bars; parents didn’t let their kids spin in circles or roll down hills or climb trees.

“We’re taught to do no harm, but we’re at the point where we’re restricting children in many ways … and it ends up negatively affecting their development,” says Ms. Hanscom, who ended up founding a nature program, TimberNook, to help kids get unstructured time outside.

A spate of articles and books in recent years have touted things like the benefits of dirt for developing children, the need for parents to step back and parent less, and the importance of free play and risk-taking outside.

Some neighborhoods are working to create an environment where it’s normal for kids to play and bike on their own. And while it’s impossible to quantify – and most “free-range” parents still feel like they’re swimming against the current – many parents are speaking out about why they’re intentionally choosing to step back.

Statistically – no matter what the perception may be among a public glued to 24-hour-news reports – this is an incredibly safe time to be a kid. Violent crime has been on a downward trend for a couple decades, rates of physical and sexual abuse against children have been falling, and the danger of kidnapping by a stranger remains, as it’s always been, very low.

'Getting out of your children's way'

Danielle Meitiv’s daughter, now almost 9, has been biking by herself to school since she was 7. When they went to Europe last summer, her kids explored Paris on their own, within a defined area.

Several years ago, she was still regularly walking her kids – then 6 and 10 – to the bus in the morning, after a harried get-out-the-door routine familiar to many parents.

On a day when she had a conflict and her husband was out of town, she told the kids they’d have to do it on their own. They did, with no prompting. The next day, she was set to walk them to the bus, but her daughter announced that wasn’t happening: They were going on their own.

“From that day until the last day of school last month, I think we’ve had one fight in the morning,” says Ms. Meitiv. “I didn’t even realize I was doing for them what they could do for themselves…. Parenting is literally getting out of your children’s way from birth to 18.”

Not criminalizing parents

That attitude can come with risks, as once-normal parenting decisions are sometimes criminalized or judged harshly.

Meitiv learned that the hard way, when she and her husband found themselves investigated by Child Protective Services two years ago after they allowed their 6- and 10-year-old children to walk to the park together. Their case gained significant attention, and Meitiv says, ultimately helped get both police and CPS policy changed in Maryland’s Montgomery County.

Now, officers who see children walking alone have the discretion to ask them if they’re OK and make a reasonable judgment about whether they need help, rather than automatically picking them up and calling CPS. CPS workers no longer automatically consider certain parenting styles neglect.

Meitiv notes that working for that change is the main reason she and her husband went public, instead of just hiring a lawyer to quietly get them off.

“The majority of people who get in trouble for having kids unattended are poorer, or from other cultures with different parenting styles,” says Meitiv, who is now running for a seat on city council. “We didn’t want to get off the hook; we wanted justice.”

Indeed, free-range parenting is a luxury that that some lower-income families don’t feel they have. Disproportionately, poor families, especially families of color, can find themselves under a microscope by child welfare authorities. In recent years, single mothers in South Carolina and Florida were arrested and briefly jailed after allowing their children – one a 9-year-old and one a 7-year-old – play at parks on their own, even though they had phones and their parents knew where they were.

'Underestimating kids, overestimating danger'

These sorts of cases only underscore the reason for an understanding of the independence that children are capable of, says Lenore Skenazy, chair of the Let Grow Foundation, and author of “Free-Range Kids” (the book that helped coin the now-popular term).

“The sooner it becomes normal again to see kids running around, riding their bikes and playing in the parks unsupervised, the sooner we remove an easy excuse for the authorities to investigate anyone not living up to the current, middle-class, ‘hyper-parenting’ ideal,” says Ms. Skenazy.

So much of the current prevalent parenting model is based on fear, she says. “It’s underestimating kids and overestimating danger.”

Kepfram Cauley and Ellie Thomas, who live in Manhattan, knew from the beginning that they wanted their son, Ahsaan – now 9 – to have the same sort of freedoms Mr. Cauley had when he grew up in the city.

“Being a parent is teaching my child how to live in the world, not to protect him from it,” says Cauley.

Ahsaan takes himself to school, two subway stops away, each morning, and – once his parents succeeded in getting permission from the school – gets home on his own. The biggest risk, says Ms. Thomas, isn’t “stranger danger,” but rather “the well-intentioned stranger that wants to help him.”

When he first started playing outside at the playground across the street, when he was 6, they had Ahsaan carry “dog tags” that included their phone numbers and let people know he was fine and had their permission. They do sometimes get questioned – occasionally belligerently – but they’re convinced that, rather than endangering their son, they're helping him gain the skills he needs as he grows up.

“It seems to me a lot of people parent out of fear, and not with forethought,” says Thomas. “Even though I understand those reactions, I try not to let them drive me…. You give them the tools to live in the world.”

AP Photo

Kenyans queue to cast their votes at dusk at a polling station in downtown Nairobi, Kenya Tuesday, Aug. 8.

When Kenyans cast their ballots on Aug. 8, they were not only voting on the issues and candidates but also to ensure the future of their democracy. This is important for the rest of Africa, where fair and free elections are still a rarity. If Kenya can demonstrate a learning curve in holding credible and peaceful votes, the rest of the continent will take note.

The key test in this election are reforms implemented after the violence of the 2007 election. Did they lessen Kenya’s ethnic divisions? The two leading presidential candidates, the incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, did play to their tribal bases. Yet they also reached out to other tribes.  And compared with previous contests, their policies represent very different approaches to governance, from poverty reduction to corruption fighting.

The post-2007 reforms included constitutional changes that work against the ethnic divide, devolve power, and improve the voting system. In addition, the  rising population of urban youth is more digitally connected and civic-minded. More than half of registered voters are under the age of 35. They demand activist government that is inclusive and focused on growth, not on winning spoils from government by ethnicity.

While Kenya’s economy is growing at a fast clip, it faces stark inequality in land ownership and a worsening in corruption. About half of the country’s 48 million people live below the poverty line. Kenya is also burdened by refugees and violence spilling over the border from Somalia and South Sudan. The newly elected president must tackle all of these problems. That task is made easier, however, if the election is seen as fair. A return to the kind of postelection violence experienced in 2007-08, when more than 1,000 people were killed, would set back Kenya – and Africa.

That is why so many international groups were supporting this election, which is one of Africa’s largest with some 16,000 candidates. With that global focus, many Kenyans turned out to vote simply to ensure a resilient democracy.